reasons to kill your buddha
by Sokudo Ningyou
Summary: This is probably the first nonSM I've done and finished in years. And mostly, it comes from my disgust over how Gambit's been treated for the past decade, as everyone seems to think he's nothing but an accessory to Rogue. Shortfic.


It seemed to be his lot in life to be miserable from love.

As he watched the smoke curling up and away, he heard the crunch of footsteps through snow behind him, confident in their stride and completely uncaring of who heard. Since they were effectively alone, there was no one to hide from but each other, which would have been useless in any case; Sunfire watched him like a hawk, waiting for him to run again. Even the quick showers he took, eschewing his old habits of soaking beneath the spray, kept him within eye range as the man insisted on showering at the same time as he.

Even though he was used to being watched, it seemed absurd when there was nothing but a two lane road winding down the mountain for a good mile in the snow. He couldn't fly – Apocalypse had not given him that power, though it would have been a damn sight more interesting than deadly gas – and he was definitely not walking. Even when he came out for a smoke, Sunfire was sure to follow him outside soon enough.

"Evenin', Sun. Thinkin' I was going to leave again?" He didn't bother to hide his sarcasm as he lifted the cigarette again, staring at the black leather covering his hands, his similarly shaded skin. Apocalypse had changed him irrevocably, in ways he hadn't expected; once, where his smile would have elicited attention, now it would most likely only gain him disgust. Even his devil's eyes had changed, casting a permanent red tinge to everything he looked at. "Don't be worryin'. I have nowhere to go. Doubt even the guilds would take me back, lookin' like this."

"You never cease to amaze me, Gambit. Within the X-Men, you complained of being ignored. Now that you've escaped that place, you still pine for their approval. Sinister has offered us a new life; why will you not accept the death of your former life and embrace the new?" Sunfire could never simply stand somewhere; he had to pose imperiously, even when there was no one around to see him act like a pompous dick. Gambit rolled that thought in his head for a minute before shrugging it off and sucking in one last lungful of dirty, blissfully cancerous smoke.

Before he flipped the butt out into the snowy ravine, he said thoughtfully, "Rogue hated my smoking. Said I'd put myself in an early grave from lung cancer before my time. I'd always say I knew I'd live a long life, seein' as how Bishop was proof of that. A' course, even that turned out to be wrong."

Sunfire said nothing as he tossed the butt, even though the man was usually quite anal about that sort of thing; most of the time, Gambit ended up carrying it back to the house and throwing it out. "Rogue didn't like a lot of things I'd do. The thievin'. The smokin'. She'd say I kept too many things from her, but I learned soon enough that she kept just as many things quiet. Had to find out from Storm about her past wit' the Brotherhood. Wolverine was the one who told me about Carol Danvers and what she'd done to her.

"I'd told her at the beginnin', when I was younger and stupid, thought I could love her and leave her, that I had a lot of secrets. Lots of tales better left untold, because I wasn't that man anymore. But some nights brought them out anyway." Without pausing, he pulled out the pack of cigarettes from his coat, slid one out, lit it, and inhaled deep and slow. "She'd say she couldn't understand me, or trust me. For a few days, she'd stay her distance. I went from not carin', to angry, to hurtin'. Because maybe it was true, what she said; I was a shameful person, with a past I couldn't kick."

"Or perhaps, she was merely a scared young woman who didn't know how to live up to the expectations she assumed you would have of her. Perhaps she was not mature enough. Any number of reasons suffice, Gambit, but why do you continue to reflect those opinions? Take control of your life again. Move on. You have killed Buddha by rejecting Apocalypse. I thought you had done so by rejecting the X-Men as well.

"But it isn't the X-Men you have to reject, is it?"

Hours later, Gambit was long out of cigarettes, and Sunfire was long gone to the warmth of the fire. He knew what Sunfire had said was true. The future lay ahead of him, with a stumbling block in his way that existed only in his memory now. Memories that never seemed to change: of cold green eyes and a fist across his face; a singed playing card thrown at his feet in the snow. The sum total of Rogue as she had marked herself within his mind: a woman he would never have.

Maybe merely crippling his Buddha was a good start.


End file.
